[pflats]

I haven't played bughouse in over a decade, so I've got to ask: what's with the openings in this video? Is bughouse strategy so different that there's a whole new opening book, are there some openings I'm completely ignorant of, or am I just overthinking things?

[thejteam]

I haven't played in over a decade as well, but when I did play strategies usually consisted of very quick attacks on the f-pawn, usually sacrificing a knight(sometimes a bishop, but you would have to "waste" a move getting a pawn out first) on the square as quick as possible. Very common for the first 3 moves to be a knight sacrifice on f7.

And trash talking anybody who dared castle.

[xenophanes]

FYI castling is standard in lots of bughouse openings and good in general, early f-pawn sacs are bad. This is at higher levels of play though. If you don't know what you're doing then you're better off with a move like Qe2 or Qe7 than castling.

Early sacrifices are bad because they put both you and your partner down material. Against top players, they will not let you have the pieces you need to win, and they will defend all squares, and if you spend any time waiting for pieces you'll get down on time and definitely never get what you want at the right time. Bughouse requires very fast, very solid play at the top levels.

But defending in bughouse is hard, and piece flow control is hard (requires watching partner's board while still moving super fast), so the newer the players the more that just sacrificing stuff can work.

[sethbannon]

Opening theory in Bughouse is indeed totally distinct from classical chess. It behooves white to be hyper aggressive and black to be hyper defensive or the game typically ends quickly.

That said, the openings played in the video are not traditional Bughouse openings.

[xenophanes]

FYI you're wrong. Standard play in bughouse is neither hyper aggresive for white nor hyper defensive for black. Building piece sacrifices into your white opening is a normally a sign of a new player.

The most standard opens in bughouse are e4/e5 and d4/d5 now.

In the past, standard was e4/d4 vs e6 setups with black either playing d6, d5, or bringing our 2 knights and a bishop next. This turned out to be overly defensive by black as far as pawn structure, while Bc4-f7 sacrifice vs 1...e5 isn't actually very good (but seems good when players are newer).

Note that in e6/nf6/nc6/bb4 openings, or 1...nf6, or various others, it's pretty common for black to play aggressively and sacrifice material (especially if white is over extending). White isn't necessarily the aggressor and has no easy to to quickly punish e6 openings. White normally would get a good position with center control then apply pressure and try to win more slowly.

[sethbannon]

What sources are you drawing on for your Bughouse theory?

[xenophanes]

The best players (who are on FICS).

[dalore]

There are significantly fewer bughouse openings than there are chess openings. Many chess openings create weaknesses which can be easily exploited in bughouse. It is for instance not recommended to move pawns other than the d- and e-pawns. Bughouse openings are generally geared towards dominating vital squares and fast development. Captured pieces become available after the first few moves and it is important to develop at this stage as there is often not enough time to do so later. Development also helps to defend against early piece drop attacks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bughouse_chess

[Tangurena]

Where I used to play, we mostly played standard chess openings. Bughouse is different enough that one can have expert chess players playing against novices and since it is team-vs-team, the novice doesn't get totally stomped flat.

Something rather common was for most of the pieces to end up on one board, so my guess is that these strange openings are intended to block off places you'd normally use to drop in a piece that your team-mate captured. So it becomes more like Go,